CPRE Sussex Director’s column written for West Sussex Gazette, Nov 2024

The budget delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves has prompted much debate in recent weeks.

At CPRE Sussex we welcomed spending on affordable housing but raised concerns over loss of support for farmers and increased bus fares. We also question what “affordable” means in practice for buyers and renters across the county.

Let’s start with the potential positives. We welcome, in principle, the £3.1 billion to deliver more affordable housebuilding – though only if those homes are built on sites backed by local people, and not as part of unrealistic Government-imposed housing targets.

We also welcome £3 billion of support for small housebuilders in an industry dominated by a few profit-hungry giants. Research shows, while big developers keep profits high, small and medium-sized housebuilders can help to bring more genuinely affordable homes to the market.

All this matters if our villages and towns are to maintain a healthy mix of people.

However, “affordable” housing is often far beyond the means of buyers in Sussex with rural affordability a particular challenge. The average price of a house in rural England is more than 16 times the average rural salary – and for renters the stats are awful too.

New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals none of the local authority areas in West Sussex are “affordable” for private rent. Across the whole of Sussex, Hastings was the only affordable area.

The ONS deem an area “affordable” if a private-renting household would spend the equivalent of 30% or less of their gross income on rent for new or existing tenancies.

Adur was the most expensive area in West Sussex – with households spending an average of 34.3% of their gross income on rent. In Arun, Chichester and Worthing the figures were 30.2%, 33.7% and 33.1% respectively.

Local authorities must require developers to provide a higher proportion of affordable housing in their schemes, even as we resist the Government’s undeliverable overall housing numbers.

Within the constraints they face, authorities should be ambitious about building their own new council housing or buying existing stock for social rent.

We also need to keep pressing the Government to be more ambitious in its aspirations for social housing – and to make ‘affordable’ actually mean affordable

The budget raised another key issue when it comes to not just affordable but sustainable local housing – effective public transport.

The increased bus fare cap announced in the budget will see bus user paying higher fares, increasing rural inequalities and social isolation and harming efforts to reach net zero by 2030.

We hope the money raised by the increased cap will be invested into our crumbling public transport network.

CPRE Sussex will be exploring the impact of the budget, including other areas like reduced support for farmers, in the coming weeks. Visit our website to keep up to date with the latest news.